Balkan Bazaar movie angers Orthodox Church

TIRANA, June 23 – A recently released movie satirizing the scandal of exhumation in a southern Albanian village has sparked fierce reaction by the Orthodox church in Albania which has condemned the movie as highly offensive for the religious community. In a letter to the State Committee on Cults, and also Prime Minister Sali Berisha, the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania describes the ‘Balkan Bazaar’ movie by Albanian director Edmond Budina as “a shameful slander to Albanian Orthodox priests and as a result a grave insult to the Orthodox Church.”
“The movie is extremely sarcastic, beyond any limit, and shows priests as grave violators and traders of human bones and their families as immoral,” says the letter, also condemning the movie’s financial support by the Albanian National Cinematography Centre.
Italian-based filmmaker Edmond Budina’s latest feature film, Balkan Bazaar, takes a jibe at the region’s jumble of nationalities, drawing on the history of the village of Kosine in southern Albania. There, Greek nationalists in 2006 unearthed what they alleged were the graves of Greek soldiers who had fallen in World War 2.
Director Budina, who also plays the role of a priest in the movie, says the Balkan Bazaar is a work of art and not a political pamphlet.
Meanwhile, Artan Minarolli the director of the national Cinematography Center says the cinematographic art, which is not an informative, but fictional, must be respected.
“The movie was screened for several weeks in the Imperial cinemas and we did not receive any reaction by viewers. To the cinema, the important thing is the spectator while interpretations– be they religious, bureaucratic or state ones– can be different,” Minarolli told reporters.
Greek nationalists have long staked a claim to southern Albania, calling the region Northern Epirus. Balkan Bazaar takes a critical look at both Greek and Albanian nationalism through the eyes of two foreigners, a scheming journalist and his superstitious driver